SSN is a digest of the day's soccer/football/futbol articles with a focus on the top European leagues and the United States National Team. Below, you’ll find links to articles and video, as well as additional features and commentary. We locate the top news of the day so you can stay updated with ease.

Six weeks can be an eternity in soccer and in politics. On July 20, AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi showed up at the opening of the club's training camp and made one blunder after the other. For a man who is usually such a natural and effective communicator, it was an all-out debacle. Witness his pronouncements:

The Professional Footballers' Association's comprehensive list of free agents is as lengthy as it is depressing. There are the hundreds of players who are still in their teens - footballers I have never heard of but ones whose professional careers could be set to end in their infancy.

Yet while the latest England squad was announced with breath of stale air (Shaun. Wright. Phillips.) the French are doing a rather better job of starting over. They have their first home game since the World Cup in Paris tomorrow night, against Belarus, and it is being approached with a sense of optimism.

That is pretty much all down to Laurent Blanc. He has approached his first few weeks in the job with an uncompromising candour and made it his mission not just to make his side play better football but also to restore a bit of mutual respect.

Three games into the Premier League season, Everton has scored a single goal and notched a single point. That return amounts to the club's worst start since 1999, but the biggest worry for Everton is that it has been unable to convert possession, often in dangerous areas, into goals.

Sometimes the blizzard of sound bites and tidal wave of trophies obscure the fact that it was Jose Mourinho who decided to christen himself "The Special One" when he is, in fact, flesh and blood like you and me.

Sure, the Portuguese possess immense talent. He also works so exhaustively hard that if it is a competition between him and the next guy to win a match, an argument or even the Champions League, the odds tilt in his favor. But, as Michael Laudrup -- the man whose Mallorca side spoiled Mourinho's La Liga debut on Sunday -- has observed, coaching Real Madrid represents Mourinho's biggest challenge yet.

It was curious to see the swift Theo Walcott left standing. England set off without him for the World Cup finals earlier this summer and that must have been particularly galling since it had probably been the impetus of his hat-trick against Croatia in September 2008 that swept the side to South Africa.

Who says history doesn't repeat itself? It did on Monday with the announcement that Bob Bradley has signed on for another four years as head coach of the U.S. men's national team.

The sense of déjà vu is almost overpowering. In 2006, U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati went after Jurgen Klinsmann to be the U.S. manager, only to be rebuffed at the last minute. Instead, Gulati was forced to settle for Bradley.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

In a hard-fought battle over the weekend, Jermaine Jones and Schalke 04 fell to Steve Cherundolo’s Hannover 96. Despite playing 89 minutes and scoring for Schalke, Jones was unable to lead his side past a determined and organized Hannover side.

If you listen carefully, you can hear soccer fans around the country emit noises ranging from expletives to guttural grunts. Bob Bradley, the man unappreciated by many and thought wrong for the job by even more, has signed a contract extension to remain the coach of the U.S. men's national soccer team through the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

And that’s a good thing.

While hiring a coach such as Jurgen Klinsmann might have been the sexier choice, the U.S. Soccer Federation got this one right. Here are six reasons why:

In March 2003, Blatter decreed that South America's turn would come in 2014 and a few days later the South American Confederation announced that Brazil was its only candidate and although Colombia briefly broke ranks, they had no serious expectations of success.

Brazil, then, has known for over seven years that the circus would be coming to town and Fifa's official announcement in October 2007 only confirmed the obvious.

But the host cities had not even been chosen - that only happened last May, with the decisions taken by Fifa rather than, as usual, by the local organisers - and it was only last Friday that Sao Paulo, the country's biggest city, finally decided which stadium it would use.

Robben then went for a two-week holiday to Curacao, where he did not kick anything more than a beach ball. Returning home fresh and fit, he went through a routine pre-season test and was diagnosed with a 5cm "hole" in his thigh muscle, forcing him to miss training for at least two months.

Hope you had a good summer, and can enjoy what's left of it - or depending on your hemisphere, I hope the early spring´s all green and gambolling. The World Cup seems strangely distant, and I've just got back from California where I took the family on holiday and where football (I mean soccer) was never far away.

Barcelona's sale of Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic to AC Milan in an unusual deal whereby the Italian club takes him on loan for the 2010-11 season (meaning he plays for and is paid by Milan but he technically remains a Barcelona player) and then pays €24 million ($31 million) to acquire him outright next summer is a textbook case of the above.

The source indicated Klinsmann, who turned down the Yanks' job after the 2006 World Cup, met with U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati and said Klinsmann is interested in the position, but gave no other details.

Though losing Ronaldo is an undoubted blow to Los Blancos boss Jose Mourinho - he has an embarassment at riches at his disposal when it comes to bringing in a replacement, with both Karim Benzema and new signing Mesut Ozil available to step into the breach.